If you tried to get your hands on a Mini NES Classic Edition yesterday, odds are you didn't. Nintendo's retro console flew off of shelves both physical and virtual within moments yesterday leaving a nostalgic public clamoring for more. It seems that most retailers extremely limited stock to begin with, and those that they did seemed to sell out instantly. Amazon said that it was going to put some on sale at 2PM yesterday, and those were gone within moments. As usual, it's a combination of limited stock and overwhelming demand. This sort of thing seems to happen a lot with Nintendo, which also never seemed to make enough to satisfy customers. More recently, the same thing happened with Pokémon GO Plus.

Nintendo, for its part, is promising more stock before the holidays. The company tweeted this yesterday once it became clear that only a miniscule portion of the people that wanted the Mini NES actually got one: "The Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition system is a hot item, and we are working hard to keep up with consumer demand. There will be a steady flow of additional systems through the holiday shopping season and into the new year."

Reassuring on one level, but it's hard to know how many the company will be releasing, or when. We'll do our best to keep you posted on when new units are made available, but I would be surprised if there's enough stock to go around, if only based on previous experience. This is a very popular item at a relatively low price, and it's only going to go up in demand as we get closer to Hanukkah.

Right now, it's the scalpers who are reaping the rewards: I seem to remember something about black markets in my econ 101 class. It's a nasty side effect of any in-demand item, and Nintendo products have seen this in spades over the years. While actual evidence is impossible to come by, restricting supply to generate hype is not a totally unheard of strategy. It only works, however, if the company can make enough machines later on to actually capitalize on that.